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Article: New and future developments in Solar Panels
around the world.
The biggest new development as far as Solar Panels go is the acceptance by
individual customers for powering their homes!
Though the government has been advocating the usage of Solar Panels, and
there has been a lot of talk about the tremendous potential of Solar Panels
in reducing our dependency on fossil fuels, the entry cost was the chief
inhibitor. Even if the cost was ok, there were a series of Solar Panels that
had to be connected in a series to power a medium sized home. That did not make
a lot of sense, and home owners stayed away. However, modern technology has
tremendously increased the efficiency of these Solar Panels, and that too while
making them slimmer and smaller! The Solar Panels of the past decade had a
conversion percentage of hardly 6-8%, and that meant a lot of the solar rays
falling on the panel were being wasted. Modern Solar Panels have conversion rates
as high as 32-35% and that too at a lower cost.
We are getting ahead of ourselves here, and before we come to the 35% conversion
Solar Panels (which are called third generation Solar Cells), there are a few more
things we need to speak about to round up the information flow.
The first inhibitor like we mentioned earlier was the entry cost, and manufacturers
caught onto that. Once commercial manufacture of Solar Panels (known scientifically
as PhotoVoltaic modules) began a few years ago, the first breakthrough in price happened.
But the real difference came once do-it-yourself kits started appearing in the Solar Power
field. It is today possible to buy a kit for under $ 200 and assemble it on a lazy afternoon
– all by yourself. There are ready made modules also available at our local depots,
but they cost higher than the DIY kits, as the efficiency is naturally higher. The second
factor was that the amount of power the Solar Cells were generating was not sufficient for
even one part of the home. So scientists worked on making the concentrator modules available
– which focus sun rays from a wider area onto one single Solar Panels thereby forcing the
panel to produce more electricity.
At MIT, another breakthrough was achieved by the researchers, who invented a new process of
redirecting light along a translucent kind of material to the edges of the solar panel, where
photo voltaic cells were located. This innovation proved to produce a conversion rate
of as high as 30%.
The next generation is what we got to earlier – of using thin film modules, which are of two
kinds – rigid and flexible. In the Solar challenge of 2008, the University of Michigan fielded
a car run on flexible thin film cells and won. These cells hold a lot of promise as they can
be sealed into one package along with the battery – making them perfect for home use.
There are a lot of exciting innovations on the anvil, and they are bound to make solar power
a major part of each home and industry in the next few years. For instance, there is solar paint
which has been around for a couple of years already. This plastic coating on our walls can generate
power out of the sun’s rays, and the future looks truly radiant! The next big change in Solar Panels
(like in every other industry) is the introduction of nanotechnology into the field – which will
make the Solar Panels smaller, yet more powerful. We will all live to see a day when it is quite
common to power entire colonies with a barrage of Solar Panels set on the roofs, and that too at an
installation cost which is just a fraction of what it is today. We hope that day comes real soon!
Solar energy innovations in the coming years will change the world when it comes to energy
market,
and the change of course for the best.
Solar Energy fight the Global Warming.
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